happiness Tag - Page 3 of 33

Reasons: The Search for Cause and Effect

I often hear that finding the reasons for things we do is the way to have a happy life. There are many public claims that understanding why we do things cures bad decisions and is the way to contentment.

However, it is important to distinguish between the search for a reason and finding a reason. Searching for a reason is a continuous state of limbo, based on the belief there is one true reason for something. Finding a reason is just an illusion that the reason we found is the one true reason.

There is a big challenge in searching for the one reason, mainly because most of our decision making (in fact, more than 90%) is done by our subconscious mind, which means we are not aware of it. We only know of 10% of it.

Our conscious mind can process a limited number of thoughts and memories, so it is unlikely to lead us to the “right” reason, or right decision. At the same time, our subconscious mind can process millions of thoughts and memories in a split second. We can never hope to be aware of everything that goes on “down there”.

So in humans, the concept of cause and effect is not that simple. There is no single cause that will lead to the same effect.

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Parenting Focus: Point Your Flashlight and Magnifier at Good Things

Parents want to raise happy children. In all of the many parenting workshops I run, regardless of their parenting style, cultural background or socioeconomic status, all the parents want their kids to be happy, healthy and successful. The problem is that parents whose kids are not happy, healthy and successful do not understand how they contribute to this. They just cannot see how their parenting focus and the attention they give to problematic things creates these problems.

When children do not behave like we want them to and when they do things we do not like, we tend to pay attention to their behavior more than when they behave like we want them to and when they do things we like. This attitude only makes them continue to behave “badly” and creates a never-ending cycle of attention to “bad” behavior.

When pay attention to the problems, the problems keep growing, and then we pay attention to them more and we trap ourselves and our kids in this dysfunctional parenting style. In life, we get what we focus on. Some call it “the law of attraction”, I call it “the flashlight model”.

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Stop Looking for Certainty and Have Faith

Certainty is a great asset in life. We all seek certainty. Some seek it inside themselves and others seek it externally. Some find it in faith, others in routine. Certainty gives us lots of confidence in the world around us. We use it to mourn the fact we were not born fortunetellers. We do not like the idea that we cannot control the future and this shakes our confidence. If we want confidence, we must lean on some things to will stay stable in our life.

I find certainty an overrated concept. In marriage, for example, people seek signs of certainty that they have chosen the right match.

One of my clients was very upset her boyfriend asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement and did not want to marry. I specifically say, “did not want to marry”, because she said that he did not want to marry her, but he did not want to marry anyone else either. He just did not believe in the institute of marriage.

When we examined this desire for certainty, we realized that if she married him in a flashy, white dress wedding, she had a greater chance of divorcing him. The more we discussed it, the more she realized that the intentions, the desire to work on the relationship and the commitment do not change if they have the same bank account, a white wedding or an expensive honeymoon. All couples start with the right intention and lucky us, they cannot see into the future.

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Money Can Buy Happiness If You Use It Wisely

I grew up in a poor family. We were five children, my mom left home early in the morning and my dad was the town postman and when he finished his first job, he worked a second job as a handyman. “Money cannot buy happiness” was my parents’ motto.

Only later on, when I started making a lot of money as student, I realized that poor people come up with these beliefs about money to justify their lack of money and they disconnect money and happiness to give their life a better meaning. What my parents really meant was that we could be happy in many ways and money was not a condition to happiness. I agree with that.

Money brings an enormous feeling of happiness if you use it to … give.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School checked the connection between spending money and happiness and they found out amazing things that are important for all happiness seekers to know.

In one experiment, they gave students $5 or $20 and asked half of them to spend it on themselves and the other half to spend it on others. One group was taking the money and enjoying it, while the other was giving it to someone else to enjoy.

What they found was that the “givers” were significantly happier at the end of the day. So money can buy you happiness if you use it to make someone else happy.

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How to Have a Good Day Everyday

Martin was a gorgeous 7-year-old who came to me for child coaching. His mom called and said she felt she could not help him. He never had a good day. He did not even know what one looked like.

After an abusive relationship with her husband, she divorced him and moved away to start a new life. They had been living in a nice place and their life changed dramatically.

For the first six months after they divorced, Martin’s mom insisted on taking him to see his dad, but his dad did not show up. When his dad did show up, he was angry and aggressive and Martin refused to spend time with him. Since his dad did not care whether he came or not, his mom decided to stop putting pressure on them to see each other. “Martin is way better than before. He used to cry and have nightmares, but it’s much better now”, she said.

Still, six months passed and Martin was angry, negative and grumpy and life was tough on him. He never smiled, the whole world was bad, it is everyone else’s fault and every tiny thing made him blow up with anger and throw temper tantrums. After years of abuse, Martin’s mom told me she needed help, because she felt she was losing her son.

So first, we played “If I were a wizard”.

This post is part 16 of 18 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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How to Join Your Kids’ “Fun Club”

Last week, I worked with a 7-year-old kid and when I asked him what mom or dad can do to make him happy, he said, “Be fun”. When I asked him if he liked his teacher, he said with a big smile, “Yes. She’s fun!”

I have heard this phrase from children many times. For them, fun is a currency. This is how they measure their relationships with their parents or with other people. First, you need to be fun. Then, you fit on a scale from “a little fun” to “great fun”.

The opposite of fun is old

I have written about the fun incentive as a motivation tool. It is also a trust tool, because it is a fantastic way to build rapport with your children. From working with many kids and raising my own children, I know that if you are not fun, you are old! Every time they say it, I feel I deserve it.

So as a parent, you need to get into your kids’ “fun club”. If you are in, they consider you as a partner for life and you can instill many thoughts, beliefs and ideas in their mind, as the best role model. If you are not at all in the club, you stand no chance.

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Turn Your Dreams of the Dream Job into Reality

Most people do not have their dream job. Many people around the world go to work because they have to, because it pays the bills, because this is what expected of them or because they have nothing else to do. The lucky ones get up in the morning with excitement, leave home (or not) and spend most of their days doing something they feel passionate about.

I have to say I am one of the lucky ones. I get up every day and get paid to do something I love. It does not feel like work, more like living my passion and my purpose, which is inspiring and motivating and helps a lot with getting up in the morning.

Research shows that doing the work we love improves many aspects of our life and makes us happier. Happiness, as you know, affects our health, our relationships, our finances, our mental wellbeing and our work. It is a never-ending cycle. We love our work, which makes us happy and improves our productivity and the enjoyment of our work, which bring us more happiness. This way, being happy about your work is like passive income that keeps on growing.

This upcoming event will give you a unique opportunity to turn your dreams of a dream job into reality too.

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Gratitude: The Happiness Attitude

Over years of learning about happiness and success, emotional stamina and wellbeing, I realized that gratitude is the best antidote for frustration. Frustration is a feeling, a thought. If we change the thought to gratitude, we will no longer feel any pain.

Life is full of challenges as we grow and become more aware of our surrounding. We are born into total dependency and we learn from our parents and other adults around us how to be frustrated when our desires are not fulfilled. This brings us lots of heartache and suffering.

The way we react to frustrations in life as kids is the way we will react to frustrations in life as grownups. We also pass this way of reacting to our children and the cycle never ends. If our reaction to frustration is positive and empowered, we hope the cycle will continue, but if our reaction to frustration is painful, we must stop the cycle NOW!

This week, I had a chat to my 14-year-old daughter Noff. We talked about her being very frustrated about an upcoming school assembly, which she hated. I told her about Pollyanna, the girl who inspired me to be a positive person and change my life from frustration to success. I asked her, “What is good about the assembly tomorrow?” She answered straight away, “It’s the last assembly of the year and there are no classes during assembly”. This made her feel better.

You see, there is something good in everything, even if it seems all bad at first glance.

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Distorted Definition of Depression Increases Depression

Depression is a big problem in our society. People think that nowadays we have more depression, when in fact we do not. What we have is a distorted definition of happiness and depression.

Here are some myths about happiness and depression that make people feel even more depressed.

Myth 1: Happy people are happy at all the time

When I go over the happiness scale with my clients, many of them think that they are supposed to be happy all the time. I can understand how people with this distorted definition of happiness can feel depressed. Some of them say that on a scale of 1-100, a happy person feels 95 happy or even 100. Since 100 is a state of total excitement and bliss, we cannot experience the excitement if we are high all the time.

Human beings’ nervous system notices differences. Feeling just a little bit happier than before works just as well when you go from 32 to 35 as when you go from 62 to 65. So every day, focus on being just a little happier than you were yesterday.

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How to Get Rid of Procrastination

Procrastination is a big problem for anyone who would like to achieve anything. Although from the outside it looks like it is not a problem to do nothing at all, it is not a state of doing nothing from the inside. Inside, there is a fear that right now, doing nothing seems better than anything we can think of doing.

It is important not to confuse a state of bliss and contentment with procrastination. Bliss is doing nothing and enjoying it. Procrastination is doing nothing from fear of the outcome of anything we do.

Procrastination and anxiety are twins and anxiety is the elder. Anxiety is a fear of some imaginary bad future and procrastination is our coping mechanism with anxiety (not a very effective strategy, but a very common one).

When we use it too often, we reach the “whatever” stage, when we “pretend” we do not care what the outcome will be. We always care! Unless you are a Buddhist in your heart and soul (which is a good aspiration), you care about the outcome. You can say you do not care, but you cannot cheat your own subconscious mind into believing you are the Dalai Lama and will be happy with whatever happens.

When our mind thinks we are in danger (because of something someone said or because of what someone might say), it has three choices: fight, flight or freeze. Procrastination is equivalent to the “flight” response – running away at the sight of danger.

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